was something that looked like the steam-powered dynamo in the theater’s basement. A group of men fed coal into it. About a dozen Mechanics sat in the waiting room.
“Can you take a couple more?” my guide called to the men working on the dynamo.
“Can you drive for us? Our scheduled driver hasn’t shown.”
“He may not make it—there’s fighting. And you know I’m always up for a drive.”
“Then we can take your passenger. We’ve room on this run. We’ll be leaving as soon as we get her charged up.”
“If you’ve got a line open, we’ll need a cab at the other end.” My guide came back to me. “We’ll have you home in no time.”
“What is this?” I asked.
“Our biggest secret—and it is a secret, mind you. Don’t go telling anyone.”
“My lips are sealed,” I promised.
He gestured me to a seat in the waiting area and sat beside me. “About a dozen years ago, when they lived around here, the magpies thought an underground magical railroad would be a good way to get around town, out of the elements. But no sooner did they dig the tunnel and lay the track than they started moving uptown. And apparently there’s no point in being a magpie without your own carriage, so the project fell by the wayside due to lack of interest. We found the tunnels and the rails, and we’ve built our own machines. We can’t use steam engines in the tunnels, so we use dynamos to power the system in places where we can put chimneys without anyone noticing. They use electricity from the dynamos and magnetism to make the cars go, but you’d have to ask someone more clever than me to know how it all works. I just know how to drive it.”
“This is amazing!” I said. “To think all this is going on beneath the surface, and nobody knows.” I thought I now had a very good idea of how the rioters had come and gone so mysteriously.
“We’re ready to go, so all aboard!” one of the men on the engine called out, and the passengers boarded the vessel. The padded bench was far more comfortable than any bus I’d ridden, but I felt exposed, as the vessel had neither roof nor sides. My guide pulled his goggles over his eyes and lit the lantern in his hat. My fellow passengers braced themselves, and I followed their lead.
The vessel shot forward on the rails, zooming into darkness lit only by the pilot’s hat. I couldn’t tell how close the tunnel’s walls were or how fast we were going. We slowed as we entered another waiting area as elegant as the first, but we didn’t stop. Suddenly, we were slung forward again. The next time we slowed, the cavern was unfinished, with only a dynamo and a few wooden benches. We shot forward, and this time when we slowed, we came to a stop.
This waiting area was barely carved out of the rock, with few furnishings. Electric globes hung from the ceiling. The tunnel extended a little farther beyond the station in a bulb-like shape that I realized was a roundhouse for turning around the cars. A few other cars like ours and some large flatbed cars without seats sat nearby on sidings.
“End of the line, all off,” my guide called out. I waited until the other passengers had disembarked before I stepped off, and my guide joined me. “What did you think about that, miss?” he asked me.
“It was incredible! If it didn’t have to be a secret, if you could use that for transit, it would greatly diminish the traffic and noise on the streets, wouldn’t it?”
“We think so. But we’re not supposed to be using it, as the tunnels don’t actually belong to us, and they certainly don’t want us moving about the city freely.” He glanced down at his feet somewhat bashfully, then said, “Um, miss.”
“Yes, I know, put the blindfold on me.”
“I appreciate your being so understanding about this, miss. It’s not that we don’t trust you.”
“I know. You can’t be too careful these days.”
After blindfolding me, he led me down passageways, taking a few twists and turns, until finally we came up a flight of stairs into what felt like a somewhat enclosed outdoor space, like an alley. We stepped briefly into the noise of the street, and then he removed my blindfold and handed me into a cab. I opened the grate between the passenger compartment and the driver’s seat and